About a month ago, one of the most popular applications on Facebook was yanked in North America. That application would be Scrabulous, a Scrabble-like game developed by the Agarwalla brothers from India who were met with a lawsuit by Hasbro.
Now Scrabulous has been pulled in the UK and Australia (at least) following a “take down notice” sent to Facebook from Mattel. Hasbro owns Scrabble in the U.S. and Canada, but in the rest of the world, it is owned by a subsidiary of Mattel. This would explain why Scrabuluous has been available in other countries until now. According to Inside Facebook, one of the Agarwalla brothers issued a statement saying:
Mattel itself had approached the Indian Courts in February 2008, seeking an order for taking down Scrabulous from Facebook and other servers. The Hon’ble High Court has reserved judgment in this matter after hearing both parties. It surprises us that Mattel chose to direct Facebook to take down Scrabulous without waiting for the Hon’ble High Court’s decision. Mattel’s action speaks volumes about their business practices and respect for the judiciary.
It is even more astonishing that Facebook, which claims to be a fair and neutral party, took this step even though they were fully aware of the circumstances under which the Mattel letter was sent to them.
We now await the decision of the Hon’ble High Court and shall accordingly decide our future course of action with regard to Scrabulous.
For the time being, it appears Scrabulous fans can still enjoy the game at its website. Those hoping to play it via Facebook, will be greeted with a “restricted” message.
Fans of the game are in an uproar, and do not care for the official Scrabble app launched through Entertainment Arts. They want their Scrabulous! I wonder what Chuck Woolery thinks about the whole situation.
